A New Review

 Authors appreciate an honest review and I was very happy to have this one from Theresa Wilson of Wanderlust Canadian here.

His Dark Enchantress was my first published novel and I still have a soft spot for the heroine, Emmaline. You can look at her details here on my Books We Love author page, or go here for purchase platforms.

What Elements Make Your Writing More Realistic?

 

This month our Round Robin blog asks: To make a story seem and feel more realistic to the reader, what elements do you include in your stories? 

Oh, where to start? There are so many elements that I like to include but I will start with the setting. I work as much at creating my setting as I do my characters’ backstories. The setting is, after all, the stage you set your characters on.

Because my stories are mostly Regency romance, I tend to have a mix of city and rural settings. My characters spend summers at their country estates and the Season, aligned with when parliament was in session, in London, with the busiest time being between Easter and when parliament adjourned in July. By then most people who could afford to were keen to get out of town because of the smell.

Country estates are lovely to create and many of my imaginary ones come from illustrations in books like Country Houses From the Air or The English Country House and the very useful Georgian and Regency Houses Explained. I have floor plans for country houses and smaller but no less impressive town houses. From these I can create my settings with a measure of accuracy and viability. What might be included on any of these estates as far as farms and crops are concerned, are all gleaned from internet searches for letters and records of the big houses, some of them going back hundreds of years, and depend on what part of the country (being England, Scotland, or Wales) the estate is. Building styles change somewhat from county to county depending on what materials are available, or how wealthy the lord of the manor might be.

Typical Cotswold Stone house Jones&Campbell

Weather with all the light and shade that comes with it, plays a part in my settings, too. For information on that for a particular year I start with a visit to https://premium.weatherweb.net/weather-in-history-1800-to-1849-ad/ and to pin-point where my characters are for what special days to create a timeline I consult https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=1818&country=9. The weather can affect so many aspects of my character’s mood. If it’s warm and sunny, then likely she is too. If it’s raining, all sorts of events can transpire from that. Think Marianne Dashwood getting soaked in the rain in Sense and Sensibility. Rain heralded my hero’s arrival in Folkestone in my book His Dark Enchantress. It fit his mood and the seriousness of the situation in which his wife, my heroine, had been abducted.

AVAILABLE HERE

Plants and flowers play a part, too, and for this I use a Reader’s Digest book of English flora, plus Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. It pays to know what plants grow in which part of the country because someone will surely call you out if have a daffodil growing where it never would or a lark singing in central London as this is a bird that likes open countryside.

How I dress my characters also comes into play and for this I use an Illustrated Encyclopedia of Costume, Fashion in Jane Austen’s London and just because, The History of Underclothes. YouTube can be particularly useful as well, especially clips like Undressing Mr. Darcy. I guess I’m a bit of a nerd because I do enjoy research and if I come across a particularly interesting snippet, it makes my day. Whether I can use it or not in a book becomes another thing altogether.

Now I’m off to see what elements these authors include in their writing. I hope you’ll take a look at them, too.

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
 Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1ZR
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com

 

Travel in the Regency Era

Our Round Robin blog for August is to post an excerpt from one of my books dealing with travel or vacation.  

In the Regency era most people did not go on vacation as we know it today. Young men might be sent on a Grand Tour of Europe for them to gain a bit of sophistication and polish in much the same way as young ladies were sent off to finishing school in more recent history. Once Parliament closed for the summer recess, London was almost deserted as families headed out to their country estates or prepared for a round of house parties.

This socializing caused a great deal of stress for the host as it was not only their guests that had to be entertained and housed but their servants, too. It could also be an expensive time for the guests, as they would want to show off their finery which might require as many as six changes of outfits in a day.

My character, Emmaline, in His Dark Enchantress, had done her fair share of travelling for a variety of reasons, but one of her trips was to get home to her grandfather as fast as she could. The place names in the narrative were all coaching stops on what was known as The Trafalgar Way.

This was the route taken by Lieutenant John Richards Lapenotiere of HMS Pickle, who carried dispatches containing the news of Lord Nelson’s victory and death in the Battle of Trafalgar on 21^st October 1805. Lapenotiere began his journey on 4^th November 1805 and covered the 271-mile route in 38 hours with 21 changes of horses. Emmaline didn’t have to make her trip at that speed and broke her journey at Dorchester to make her way home from there. Here is the excerpt:

Emmaline rested her head against the window frame, thankful for the corner seat she had managed to claim in the crowded stagecoach. Dressed in her shabbiest clothes, her cheeks dirtied a little and a wide-brimmed bonnet pulled down as much as possible to hide her face, no one paid much attention to her.

Pressed on her left by a large farmer, she sank further into her corner and remained mostly unseen by her fellow passengers. The gentleman sitting opposite her tried to draw her into a conversation but, after being subjected to her mute nods and one-syllable answers soon left her alone.

If not for her thoughts of Baymoor House, her grandfather and Lucius, Emmaline would possibly have slept a little. Baymoor itself would not have changed, its grey stone walls withstanding all winds and weather as it had done for a century and more. Her grandfather, she knew, had been in decline for some time before he’d insisted that she go to London. How much worse might his condition be now? And then there was Lucius. Did he have any regrets? Might he miss her just a little? Her heart weighed heavy just thinking of him.

She remained awake through Staines, Bagshot, and Hertford-bridge. Basingstoke, Overton, Andover all slipped by in a blur. At each stop, with passengers clambering in and out of the coach, Emmaline avoided being jostled by sitting firmly in her seat. But, with the unsavoury smell of unwashed bodies and stale clothing, the constant noise of clattering hooves and rumbling wheels, she was almost comatose with fatigue.

She endured the changes at Salisbury, Woodyates and Blandford, but at Dorchester she knew she must stop and rest. She had not eaten since she and Noble had racked up at the inn at Epsom. Then she had barely managed a small piece of cheese and a crust of bread and the tea she had drunk in Juliana’s room was a distant memory to her parched throat.

Now let’s take a look at at what these fine authors have to say.

Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Marie Laval http://marielaval.blogspot.co.uk/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1GK
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com

What Are You Working On?

First I must apologize to my fellow bloggers for having been MIA in June. I was behindhand all month due to working on what is now my latest book, so July's topic is particularly pertinent.

This month the question is: what book (or type of book) are you currently working on? Do you have ideas for future books?

  

I have just typed THE END on Book 3 in my Berkeley Square Regency romance series. When I started writing Book 1, I had no idea that it would expand beyond that. It wasn’t even Book 1 at that point, just an idea for a Regency romance that wouldn’t go away, but that’s what happens when characters almost jump off the page and demand their own books.

Okay, okay. Not literally, of course. It’s just one of those quirky turns of phrase that writers tend to bandy about. Non-writers just don’t get the concept of having people wandering around in your head and whispering in your ear from the inside out. My heroine in Book 1, His Dark Enchantress is Emmeline Devereux, whose best friend is Lady Juliana Clifton. Juliana intruded so much while I was writing His Dark Enchantress that I gave her a book of her own, Book 2, His Ocean Vixen.

Believing I had done with those characters, I started thinking about what else I could write, but a reader query asking if Lady Rosemary Darnley, the villainess in Book 1, ever got her comeuppance, started me on another path which led to Book 3, His Unexpected Muse. This involves the unexpected (as the title suggests) romance between Lady Olivia Darnley (Rosemary’s daughter) and Lord Peter Skeffington, both characters from Book 1. You’ll have to read the book, which will be launched next month, to find out what happens to Lady Darnley.

So what comes next? I have an idea for a new series on Regency belles (hmm, now that could work as a series title) and already have a rough outline for Book 1. It will mean more research, but that is the part I really like. Plus, why let all the research I have already done go to waste?

Take a look at what my fellow Round Robin authors have in the works by clicking on their links.

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1EW
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com

Our first Round Robin blog for 2019 asks: How do you develop different personalities in your main characters? How about secondary characters? Do you have a favorite secondary character or one who has moved on into their own story?

I just love building characters and use several techniques for developing them once they have introduced themselves to me. That might sound odd, but I see my characters and know their names and physical details before I even start writing. But for ‘the rest of the story?’ Ah. That’s where the character building and developing comes in.

My first go-to is to give them a birthday. From that, I use their astrological signs to determine their strengths and weaknesses. I don’t necessarily include their birthdates in my text, I just get to know them better and definitely pay attention to their weaknesses as this is often where I find my characters’ flaws. If my characters have siblings, I’ll refer to The Birth Order Book to see what else I might discover about them depending on where they come in their family's line-up. I do a character interview, and this can be a surprising exercise as I find totally unexpected aspects of my characters, which all add up to a more rounded, fully three-dimensional character.

One of my secondary characters was Lady Juliana Clifton from my first Regency title, His Dark Enchantress. She was my hero’s sister and kept intruding at every turn, especially when Lord

Clifton’s love interest, Emmaline, was on the page. I think there might have been some rivalry going on there, each vying for His Lordship’s attention! Once I promised Juliana her own book, she went away. She got her own book, His Ocean Vixen, the second book in my Berkeley Square series. The third book in the series, His Unexpected Muse, will be released this coming March and again, the characters featured are secondary characters from the first book, Lady Olivia Darnley and Lord Peter Skeffington.

The characters who populate our pages are with us for far longer than it takes to write the book they feature in, and I know I’m reluctant to let them go. See what these other authors have to say about their characters.

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
Helena Fairfax http://helenafairfax.com/blog
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq.1tc
Fiona McGier http://www,fionamcgier.com/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Connie Vines http;//mizging.blogspot.com/
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com/